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My Fight with Weight Gain

During my younger & more youthful days , i was always an active person and never weighed more than 47kgs! At 5.5′ and 47kgs – i was obviously proud and satisfied with how i looked. I had my sports activities in school , my routine aerobic exercises i did at home while nobody was around, and my weekend classical-dance classes (Bharatanatyam) which was my favorite!!

I had everything on-board and was in the right direction – but than came my ‘devastating’ years of Medical College life. The student life begin,and down went the ‘healthy & fit’ me! Everything stopped,and that alone made me put on some unwanted weight. I obviously had to top it of with lots of junk food,fast food & a whole lot of oily food (especially since i was studying in India – where oil & ghee has no limits in their delicious canteens). I didn’t have time to exercise or eat healthy – and the extra weight was obviously not my ‘issue’ when you’re a Medical student. And this went on for years, until i got married – and i finally weighed a horrifying 54kgs!! ( I have never told anyone my weight except my husband – so this is a huge step for me.But what the heck!)

But nobody told me this was only the ‘beginning’!

As i started to embrace the life of ‘newly weds’ and being a new wife – i picked up a contagious infection from my husband – the skill of ‘loving food’! We were on a spree of trying everything out, and I being a ‘typical’ wife wanted to make the best pasta for my hubby – so bring on the cheese and cream sauce baby!! There were no limits,cause i had to make it taste right! Fortunately,I thank god for that beautiful long pool in our condo, which saved me many kilos.But that was just a typical excuse! So by the time I realized I was taking this to a different level , I was already 57kgs and 2months pregnant!

Obviously being pregnant i had to embrace the wight gain,but chose to still remain healthy in the beginning with my alternate day swimming at the pool in my condo. However,that only lasted me 2weeks!

Two weeks was all i had to celebrate my pregnancy,before every single sight of food made me nauseous. I was sick of food,and even the smell of food in the kitchen made me nauseous. That was a huge disadvantage to my poor hubby – cause I refuse to even enter our kitchen to cook food for him,or follow him out to feast on some good food at our favorite restaurant.

By the 4th month of my pregnancy,I was down to 54kgs with all the vomiting and hate towards food. I was living on fruits and soya bean drinks – for breakfast,lunch,tea & dinner. That was all I had.Occasionally on weekends – 2 slice of bread would be a good feast.

By the time I reached my 5th month of pregnancy – I was not given a choice! The meat had to go in, even if it was gonna come out in 10 minutes. I fought with everyone to ‘let me eat what I want’ – but as I said, I was not given a choice. And this went on till my last day of pregnancy!

So how on earth did I put on 20KGs when I was pregnant??!!!

Good question.

During my medical college days(again it goes back to those horrifying days) – I had a series of Acute Gastritis, which eventually got me to have recurrent gastric ulcers with uncomfortable indigestion! This flared up during my pregnancy,and made it a whole lot more difficult for me. By the time I was in my 7th month of pregnancy,it was so severe – that I had to start medications and improve my eating habits. So I was advised to eat smaller and more frequent meals, and reduce my stress!

This is where and how I put on my 20KGs !! I had to eat small meals even in the middle of the night – since I was already awake after vomiting out my pre-bedtime meal!! And to reduce my stress level, I obviously opted for a more unhealthier choice of meal. Two slices of bread with chocolate Nutella spread was a good small-stress free meal for me.

This eventually got me to a SLAPPING 74kgs at the end of my pregnancy!!!! (#facepalm moment)

My Angel was a healthy baby girl weighing 3.75kg. YES 3.75kg !! I made her as healthy and round like her Mum.LOL.

Postpartum was emotionally,mentally and physically a big challenge for me. I’m sure it is to any mother out there.** I will soon share with you on another Post -‘My challenges during Postpartum’.

We Indians have a Confinement period of 1 month/30 days – in which we are suppose to eat only certain types of food and spices, with very minimal fluid intake.Medically, it’s just not right to drink minimal water while breastfeeding.But our ancestors demand we do it – so just listen!! We are only allowed to have minimal rice with certain vegetables,fish or chicken;and it all has to be mixed with ginger.And only minimal water,with no other type of fluid intake.Honestly, I’m not sure how true is all this myths about confinement food and minimal fluid intake.Does it work? It might work,or it’s all just a myth from our ancestors. But for me, the only reason i do it – if it makes the elderly people in your home happy, than there is no harm in just doing it for a month. Why fight against it, when it’s just 1 month.Different people have their own views about this,and we should just respect them if it comes from our eldest.

Now how do we do all this for 1 month,while being jailed at home; AND adjusting to the new life of Motherhood? Yes we were allowed to eat rice – but i had another problem. I HATE RICE. From a very young age,the one thing that drove my mum mad about me was the fact I refuse to eat my rice! She made me sit on the table for HOURS, until my plate was cleaned. And i would literally sit for hours refusing to eat it. But that’s another whole story,so I wont get there.

So the first 2 weeks of my confinement,i couldn’t escape the ‘rice’. So that alone made me opt for way less rice,and this obviously drove my ‘confinement lady’ mad. But eventually, I made it through the 1 month – AND made it alive!!

By the end of my 1 month,with all this ‘confinement’ rules & breastfeeding at the same time – i was down to 65kgs.

65kgs is no where close to my ideal weight.For 5months,I used the same excuse many mothers have used,just to make ourselves feel better.

But for how long was I allowed to use this standard excuse –

“I just had a baby , I’ll loose my weight soon.”

After 1 year of hard work and determination, my weighing scale finally shows me 52KGs!

Follow my next post , and I’ll share with you my journey on how I lost that weight.

5 thoughts on “My Fight with Weight Gain”

Hye Dr. Very nice post. Looking forward for ur next post.. cause I also need to loose weight. Plus I m in the final steps to end med school.. need some tips and tricks in loosing weight. Hopefully got some hint about it in ur next post

Loosing weight sounds good but it may not easy??? Definitely it is need to put up of whole hard work and determination, like eating healthy or eat clean, portion control…. Substituting carbs into proteins or low carb, above all, the workout!!! A proper workout technique with positive mindset is must to achieve that target goal for the ideal weight, like myself, I’ve ditched all the fried, oily & processed food including any food that made from refined sugars!!! It is bad, unless if substitute with honey, molasses… I’m doing a yoga, & the reason is I’ve to stick to my yogic diet which has banned all the unwanted bad food with bad calories!!! I believe that Ur may now in love with new lifestyle of fitness… Keep it up & always!!! Health is wealth, further we love to be strong and fit & some people misconcept it that fitness is all about to getting THIN..